escoger

I feel as though I am getting more of a European perspective over here than South American, just because everyone I meet is from Europe (Holland and Germany) and we spend so much time speaking in English about world politics. Makes me really want to heighten my U.S. government and politics knowledge. I find myself rarely defending America but at the same time often explaining some of our questionable interactions with the rest of the world based on our size and cultural differences...something like that. But! These young kids from Europe, who are the educated ones with the desire and opportunity to travel are getting me very discouraged about Mother Earth and her future relationship with humans. This entire trip to South America has gotten me thinking even more (if possible) pessimistically. These kids who claim they have more environmental conscious nations than America actually don´t give two shits about the environment, or know any actual real time information about what is happening or the rates of change and degradation our eco systems are experiencing right now. and if I have to hear another person tell me "you should not be to be vegetarian/vegan/whatever if it makes you unhappy", and ask "why sacrifice your food pleasure doing something that really won´t make any difference" I will kill them and barbeque their ignorant meat...sorry, I only jest..., but I just wanna shout SHAME shame on you for being so selfish and not realizing the potential for change in each individual person. I am obviously far from practicing the ideal lifestyle for the earth, faaaaaarrrrrr, and many of you have seen me eat many a delicious meat stick with utmost enjoyment, but that is wrong and, I eat that meat with at least the comfort knowing that 85% or more of my daily meals have excluded meat, and yes every single meal counts. If Americans reduced their meat consumption by 10% it would free 12,000,000 tons of grain - enough to feed 60,000,000 people (the population of Great Britain) (http://www.flex.com/). The conversations I have engaged in here just make me ever more aware of how stubborn and unwilling people are of change or to reducing their personal comforts at any level. This experience has made me hate my major as I sometimes do because it opened my mind up to so much depressing knowledge but also love my major (environmental studies) with a new vigor and passion. I feel like I am able to see the world, humans and society with an extended perspective to the earth and...I just find it very interesting... alright well sorry for the RANT! But I am continually asking myself WTF is up with this western perspective. I am as guilty as the rest, but I am talking to people who either don´t even know what is going on, or know and feel they don´t have to change any aspect of their life and free themselves from any kind of global responsibility.

okay so on the note of all this environmental do'goody business... I left the farm and am in Peru for two weeks...
The volunteer coordinator of Brethren Y Unida, the farm/foundation, left a month before I got there. Stuart was the one with all the authority, knowledge and organization. So although I could have continued to wake up at 6.45 and preform manual labor, weeding in the tree nursery, shoveling cow poopoo, and forming earth beds I chose to have another kind of learning experience and left with four of the other volunteers to travel to Peru for a bit. I feel like I am still learning, though different kinds of things. And getting to see some of the most beautiful landscapes of my life. 24 hours via bus  (14 hours to Loja and then another 10 to Piura) just to get to the other side of the Peruvian border, but I seriously enjoyed it with my face hanging out the window the entire time we had day light. I didn´t think I would have another opportunity to leave Ecuador and it is exiting to get to experience another country in South America. Amazing to see also the dry, barran dirt fields right next to the shanty towns with hundreds of thousands of plastic bags blowing around THINK ABOUT YOUR CONSUMPTION.

lots of love, especially to those consciously navigating their time on earth. Yes, we are animals, who put our own survival first, but somewhere in our brains we do have access to rationality, lets use it!

again sorry for the Agro blog post. I am trying to process the experiences here, in a place with all the same problems and worse thousands of miles from home...whew

ciao baby.